REVIEW: On the Edge by Shannon Stacey

On the Edge by Shan­non Stacey (2007) pub­lished by Samhain, LTD. On the Edge is the sequel to 72 hours that I read last year and enjoyed. The sto­ries revolve around The Devlin Group and their oper­a­tives and their mis­sions that seem to go awry. The Devlin Group works locally as well and globally.

The Devlin Group is led by Sean Devlin and his admin exec is Alex Rossi from 72 hours. On the Edge intro­duces us to Char­lotte Rhames, an exec­u­tive admin­is­tra­tor who has been with the Devlin Group for years. She knows every detail on every secret oper­a­tive in the field. Then there’s Devlin oper­a­tive Tony Cas­savetti, a Texan who was look­ing for­ward to some R&R after his last assign­ment went to hell.

The story opens with a bang. The reader is placed cen­ter stage as a hostage sit­u­a­tion is under­way. Tony Cassavetti’s cover has been blown. Nine months pre­vi­ous Tony was able to infil­trate their tar­get, am who goes by Chavez and his ille­gal oper­a­tions that included child traf­fick­ing in Texas.

Under fire from Chavez and his men, Tony is lis­ten­ing to Char­lotte on his open comm, inform­ing him of the local law enforce­ment wait­ing out­side to storm the room. Charlotte also reminds him that the con­trac­tual agree­ment is to get Chavez and col­lat­eral dam­age was accept­able. Of course Tony has other plans. In the end, the hostage is saved and the tar­get is left dead. Mis­sion completed.

After this last assign­ment, Tony is on a plane, head­ing to a meet­ing being held at Alex Rossi’s home.  All Devlin group oper­a­tives are man­dated to attend. Tony is look­ing for­ward to meet­ing Char­lotte Rhames, the owner of the sexy voice on his open comm for the last 8 years. Also, Char­lotte is look­ing for­ward to meet­ing Tony and mak­ing her fan­tasy into real­ity by hav­ing a fling with him. The two meet and like each other. How­ever, at the meet­ing some­thing goes seri­ously wrong.  They have an agent who has crossed them which is unprece­dented in the his­tory of the Devlin Group. 

In the after­math, the cir­cle of trust is lim­ited to three: Char­lotte, Tony and Gal­lagher. Every­body else is on a need to know basis. A plan is born to go off to Greece to catch the cul­prit who has killed and wounded some of their oper­a­tives at the meet­ing. The plan: Char­lotte to go back to the life she had in Greece, before she joined The Devlin Group to snare their tar­get with Tony play­ing body­guard. Alas, this causes major con­flict between Tony and Char­lotte because of Charlotte’s lack of field work expe­ri­ence and accept­ing her pre­vi­ous pro­fes­sion of being a prostitute.

I liked the story but the plot flawed. Start­ing with the char­ac­ters, I really liked Char­lotte and her no-nonsense atti­tude. How­ever, their plan in Greece was flawed and this fur­ther weak­ened the plot for me. I mean you’re going after a trai­tor who worked for the Devlin group for 3 years. 

Nat­u­rally, the antag­o­nist would know some sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion about the group. So when things go wrong, it was expected and utterly pre­dictable. The flaws of the plan are also noted in the sto­ry­line and by the char­ac­ters. With their hand already tipped to the enemy, I’m sur­prised that they made it out alive but this is fic­tion after all.

Another prob­lem for me was the hero, Tony Cas­savetti. I didn’t much like him and his “my way or the high­way” type of games he would play with Char­lotte. Of course, Char­lotte was the per­fect match for him in mak­ing him under­stand who’s boss. Tony’s prob­lem is that he suf­fers from iden­tity cri­sis because of some bag­gage that stemmed from his child­hood. [cue vio­lin music] He just can’t accept other peo­ple sac­ri­fic­ing any­thing for him. It’s never been done. Nobody’s ever loved him or cared for him until now. Woe is me. Tear. [/cue vio­lin music]. His char­ac­ter at times really annoyed me. Another big prob­lem for me as a reader was the lack of chem­istry. Where was it? Their rela­tion­ship came across as being bor­ing and flat to me. No spark. No sizzle.

Despite all the flaws I noted, Ms. Stacy can write some really good action scenes and she has a good ear for dia­logue that seems nat­ural and not forced.  I loved the open­ing of the story but that ten­sion didn’t last long. It pretty much died when Char­lotte and Tony’s Bom­bardier plane landed in Greece. As short as this novella was in length (400 pages accord­ing to my PDA), the pac­ing was uneven and I could and did put this book down and for­get it.  On the Edgewas miss­ing that some­thing, that umph that I just can’t put my fin­ger on exactly.

Novel­las in gen­eral are not my favorites despite being quick reads (well some of them are quick reads). Alas, Ms. Stacey did at least give her char­ac­ters some back story to make their mutual attrac­tion prob­a­ble and I liked the end­ing. The author has them take a 6 week break to sort things out after the assign­ment is over. Rela­tion­ships devel­oped under stress­ful sit­u­a­tions do not a rela­tion­ship make sez me. 

On the Edge was not a bad read but it was aver­age read to me and unre­mark­able. As dis­ap­pointed as I was with On the Edge, I’m glad to have read it and look for­ward to read­ing the next Devlin group story. After read­ing and enjoy­ing 72 hours, I was look­ing for a more stronger effort here but it didn’t hap­pen. My grade, C+.